From the Ninetyfourums, a reader, Sir Thursday, writes:
Past history has shown us that (at least under the current CBA) trades get you championships, not rebuilding projects. So my preferred strategy would be to continue to maximize our wins in the short term while waiting for the right trade to come along. Morey is a good enough GM to be be able to keep us in that state (many lesser GMs would fail, I suspect), and then when the big trade comes, it will be all the sweeter knowing that the organization has never stopped trying to put a winning team together.
The above comments were in response to my suggestion that the team ‘needed’ to trade Scola. I do think I agree in theory with the reader’s thesis. History is replete with examples of child ‘super-teams’ that never put it together: come to think of it, I can’t think of a single time it’s ever worked. The Thunder are trying to break that curse.
Where I disagree though is that while stocking up on young talent by trading off veterans usually doesn’t work, you almost always have to get your ‘superstar’ through the draft. And to get your superstar through the draft, you have to get really bad first. So essentially, I’m starting to think that the ideal model for team-building is to trade off all of your veterans, get really bad, hit big in the lottery, and then stock up again on vets.
My other point is strictly on Scola: while some will disagree, from what we saw from Patterson to close the season, I’m not so sure trading the former will make this team any worse; the Rockets were markedly better on the defensive end with the rookie in the starting lineup.
I don’t think the rationale behind trading Scola is to ‘let the young guys develop’ as conventional wisdom would suggest. The reason to trade Scola is to obtain full value for the 31-year-old before he starts to slip.
[You can follow the quoted discussion here...]
